Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The 5-Year Spring/Summer Es Study - Teaser


Hi All,

The following chart is the source data for the study I have been working on.
I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will be published as part of the 2010 Central States VHF Conference proceedings.

It is composed of 65,014 PropNET captures and identified partials from April 20 to August 15 2005 to 2009. The data is only PropNET participants captured here at my QTH in North Central Texas.

There are about 60 other charts of the phenomena that I have done for the study, parts of it I will post and explain in the coming weeks here on the blog.

Stay tuned.... more to come
73's
Art Jackson KA5DWI

2 comments:

K7DWI - Art said...

From Joe Counsil
K0OG

Art,

Very interesting data! If (in my mind) I smooth the data and look at lower-frequency components, I see a clear indication of about a 25-day sub-cycle. Does this show up in the 5-year averaged data from other bands?

The sun has a 25-day rotation cycle about its axis. Does this explain it? Is this cycle visible primarily due to a dominant effect of one-year's data, or does it appear in each year? Would it be more pronounced if the cycles were overlaid based upon the appearance of 25-day cycles, rather than the day of the month?

This raises interesting questions. For instance, is it possible that the sun has a semi-permanent "hot" side and "cold" side, or is it only attributable to the appearance of active regions randomly placed on the sun's face?

Thanks for all your work collecting and analyzing this fascinating data!

73,
-Joe-
K0OG

K7DWI - Art said...

My Reply - KA5DWI

Good Morning Joe,
Thanks for the comments.
You might want to join the blog and that could take of the posting problem. Actually Ev, W2EV is the owner.

As for smoothing out the data, Yes !!

In future posts, you will see the info displayed in a variety of ways.
For example: multiple day running averages, weekly, and several polynomial trend lines (lines of best fit). I also will have hourly, directional, distance and most important; probability charting.

The end result will not be a strong lunar or solar cycle affecting the numbers, but what appears to be meteor.

Overall, Es are consistent and predictable, but seem to get a nice boost from the rocks at key dates and times. The calendars will really display that.

The whole intent of the study was to say "Sporadic" is the wrong term.

Again, the chart is a teaser. I did not use other bands because there were not enough participants to satisfy the requiements of the "Central Limit Theorum" of statistics. 10 Meters is the basis because of many PNP participants.

Also, I am (or was) very active on VHF. I have worked 43 states and 199 grid squares on 2-Meters, plus 49 states, over 500 grids and 60 countries on 6 Meters, and was an avid analog FM-TV DXer. Needless to say, I did a lot of cross referencing in the analysis.

73's
Let's chat more.
Art KA5DWI